Corey trial: Pregnant victim had little chance

Julie Corey told her boyfriend she was headed to Marlboro for baby clothes. Instead, prosecutors allege, she cut a baby from the womb of a pregnant neighbor and proudly passed the infant off as her own, while the slain body of the real mother decomposed in a trash-strewn apartment.

It doesn't get more gruesome than this, and the sensational nature of the trial in Worcester Superior Court has attracted the leech-like interest of Nancy Grace and other purveyors of murder as entertainment.

But for all its salacious elements, for all the attention paid to defendant Corey and her depraved pattern of deceit, the tragedy of the victim's life is largely overshadowed by her infamous, unfathomable death. That's a crime, too.

"This case is not about residents of Worcester," Assistant District Attorney Daniel J. Bennett told the jury in his opening statement Monday. Nor, he said, is it about people who are different.

"This case is about Julie Corey," he said.

Well, yes and no. Like it or not, some people are indeed different. And those very differences can make them an attractive victim.

Darlene Haynes was just 23 in the summer of 2009 when someone crushed her skull, sliced open her abdomen, wound an electrical cord around her neck and stuffed her in a bedroom closet. Her body was so decomposed that the medical examiner couldn't tell how long she lived during the attack. We can only hope that death came quickly, before she understood the violation she would suffer.

This sad young woman, undereducated and unemployed, was already the mother of three kids, two of whom lived with a grandmother. In his opening statement, Bennett called her a "simple person." Darlene's father, seated in the front row of the courtroom, said his daughter suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and was developmentally delayed.

"She was teased all her life," said Fred Haynes, during a recess. "When she was 15, she was 10. It was hard for her."

Neighbors said she was lonely and would show up on their doorstep, hoping for a cigarette and some company. Just a month before her murder, she claimed that Roberto Rodriguez, the father of her youngest child, pushed her into a glass table. Fred Haynes said his daughter's arm was covered with bruises when he last saw her, a couple of weeks before she died. Facing eviction, she was discovered only when the odor from her apartment on Southgate Street overpowered the landlord, who initially attributed the stench and "thousands of flies" to her filthy living conditions.

Yet for all her challenges, Darlene was conscientious about her prenatal appointments, even if it meant taking the bus or walking to Women's Health of Central Massachusetts. Julie Corey, who claimed she was pregnant about the same time, befriended Darlene and allegedly bought her wine coolers the night of the attack.

The 39-year-old defendant sat expressionless at the defense table with her court-appointed dream team of Michael Wilcox and Louis Aloise, whose strategy is to pin the killing on other men, Rodriguez among them. With ADA Bennett a tough prosecutor straight from central casting, and precious little physical evidence linking Corey to the killing, the trial is sure to transfix court watchers.

As Bennett noted, this case is about Julie Corey. But it's also about lives lived under the radar. It's about a mother who struggled to overcome heartbreaking obstacles, and about lost souls whose torment we can't begin to comprehend. In that sense, this case is indeed about people who are different, who wind up as victims precisely because they're vulnerable, guileless and desperate to belong.